The Writings Of John Burroughs Xxii

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THE WRITINGS OF
JOHN BURROUGHS

WITH POBTKAITS AND MANY ILLTJSTKATIONS

VOLUME xxn

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John Burroughs (March 2 Sy 1921 )

THE WRITINGS

OP

JOHN BURROUGHS

xxn

UNDER THE MAPLES

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Eitierfiitte |)rci!£i Cambrtttse
1921

Copyright Ifltl

By Houghton Mifflin Comjmny
AU righta rmrvtd

PREFACE

It was wtiile sitting in liis laiy-lairn Btocly in the
(!atHkills and looking out upon the maple woods of
the old home farm, and under tlie maples at Eiv-
erl)y, that the most of these eanays were written,
during the last two years of the author ’i life. And it
was to the familiar haunts near his Iludnon River
home that his tliouglits wistfully turned wliile win-
tering inBouthern Chdifornia in 19^1. As he pictured
in liii mind the ice hrtmking up on the river in the
eiystalline March days, the rciturn nf the birds, the
first hitpaticiui, he long«id to Im back among them; he
was there in spirit, gating upon tlie river from the
iummer«houm^, or from the veranda of the Nest, or
seated at liis table in the ehestmildiark Study, or
busy with his sap-gathering and sugar-making.

Casting aliout for a title for iliis volume, the
vision of maple-trtH%H ami dripping sap ami crisp
Marcdi days playing constantly la^fon* Ins mind,
one day while sorting and shifting the essays for liis
new hook, he suddenly said, **I have it! Well call
it Und$r Urn Maplml*'

Ilia love for the maple, and eoiiifa;|uetitIy his
pleasure in having hit upon this title, eiin gath-
ered from the following fnigineiit found tiinong liii
iiM»c«llaiieous iiotei: *‘I always fca?! at home where

V

PREFACE

the sugar maple grows It was paramount in the
woods of the old home farm where I grew up. It
looks and smells like home. When I bring in a ma-
ple stick to put on my fire, I feel like caressing it a
little. Its fiber is as white as a lily, and nearly as
sweet-scented. It is such a tractable, satisfactory
wood to handle — a clean, docile, wholesome tree;
burning without snapping or sputtering, easily
worked up into stovewood, fine of grain, hard of
texture, stately as a forest tree, comely and clean as
a shade tree, glorious in autumn, a fountain of cool-
ness in summer, sugar in its veins, gold in its foliage,
warmth in its fibers, and health in it the year
round.”

Clara Barrus

The Nest at Riverhy
West Park on the Hudson
New York

CONTENTS

I. The Falling Leaves 1

II. The Pleasures of a Naturalist 11

III. The Flight of Birds S2

IV. Bird Intimacies . S 9

V. A Midsummer Idyl 69

VI. Near Views of Wild Life 79

VII. With Roosevelt at Pine Knot 101

VIII. A Strenuous Holiday 109

IX. Under Genial Skies 127

I. A Sun-Blessed Land 127

II. Lawn Birds 129

III. Silken Chambers 132

IV. The Desert Note 143

V. Sea-Dogs 148

X. A Sheaf of Nature Notes 152

I. Nature’s Wireless 152

II. Maeterlinck on the Bee 156

III. Odd or Even 163

IV. Why and How 165

V. An Insoluble Problem 167

VI. A Live World 169

VH. Darwinism and the War 172

VIIL The Robin 175

IX. The Weasel 177

X. Misinterpreting Nature 179

XI. Natural Sculpture 181

vii

(X)NTENTS

XL Ruminationh I hi

1. Man a Fart of Natim^ Ih|

IL Marnis Aurelius on Deidli Ih;i

III. ''rhe Interpn^ter t>f Xattm* Ihil

IV. Original Sounds Ifiii

V. The (axsnhe Harmony IfM

VL (X)sniic Rhythms l!i.1

VJL The Beginnings of Life I III

VIIL S|>en(lilirift Naitm^ l!i;»

XIL New Gleaninoh in Fikui anii SWum Ili7
L Sunrise Ili7

IL Nature’s MetluHls I fill

III. Heads and Tails ^in:$

IV. An Unsavory Suhje(*t

V. (XiancT in Animal Life

VL Mosquitcx's and Fleas ^ilil

VIL The (Xiange? of ('limnie in

Soutliern Uiilifornta in

VIIL All-Seeing Natui^

Index 21#

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

UBROUGHS Frontispiece

a a photograph taken March 23, 1921, at Pasadena
, California, by Charles F. Luminis.

Baltimore Orioles and Nest 48

1 a photograph by Frank M. Chapman

Eggs of the Vesper Sparrow 80

1 a photograph by G. Clyde Fisher

aIj perched on the wheel” 114

a a photograph. The figures are (left to ri^t)
nas A. Edison, John Burroughs, Henry Ford, and
rey S. Firestone.

:es of Erosion 182

1 a photograph taken in the Gkirden of the Gods,
rado, by Charles S. Olcsott.

UNDER
THE MAPLES

I

THE FALLING LEAVES

The time of the falling of leaves has come again.
Once more in our morning walk we tread upon
carpets of gold and crimson, of brown and bronze,
woven by the winds or the rains out of these deli-
cate textures while we slept.

How beautifully the leaves grow old ! How full of
light and color are their last days! There are
exceptions, of course. The leaves of most of the
fruit-trees fade and wither and fall ingloriously.
They bequeath their heritage of color to their fruit.
Upon it they lavish the hues which other trees
lavish upon their leaves. The pear-tree is often
an exception. I have seen pear orchards in Oc-
tober painting a hillside in hues of mingled bronze
and gold. And well may the pear-tree do this, it
is so chary of color upon its fruit.

But in October what a feast to the eye our woods
and groves present! The whole body of the air
seems enriched by their calm, slow radiance. They
are giving back the light they have been absorbing
from the sun all summer.

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UNDER THE MAPLES

The carpet of the newly fallen leaves looks so
clean and delicate when it first covers the paths and
the highways that one almost hesitates to walk
upon it. Was it the gallant Raleigh who threw
down his cloak for Queen Elizabeth to walk upon?
See what a robe the maples have thrown down for
you and me to walk upon! How one hesitates to
soil it! The summer robes of the groves and the
forests — more than robes, a vital part of themselves,
the myriad living nets with which they have cap-
tured, and through which they have absorbed, the
energy of the solar rays. What a change when the
leaves are gone, and what a change when they come
again! A naked tree may be a dead tree. The
dry, inert bark, the rough, wirelike twigs change
but little from summer to winter. When the leaves
come, what a transformation, what mobility, what
sensitiveness, what expression! Ten thousand
delicate veined hands reaching forth and waving
a greeting to the air and light, making a union and
compact with them, like a wedding ceremony.
How young the old tre^ suddenly become! what
suppleness and grace invest their branches! The
l^ves are a touch of immortal youth. As the
cambium layer beneath the bark is the girdle of
perennial youth, so the leaves are the facial ex-
pression of the same quality. The leaves have their
day and die, but the last leaf that comes to the
branch is as young as the first. The leaves and

%

TIIK FALLING LEAVES

till* blossom and the fruit of the tree eome and go,
yet they age not; under tlic magic touch of spring
the miracle is rc|>eated over and over.

The maples jierhapa undergo tlie moat complete
transformation of all the forest trees. Their leaves
fairly lavomo luminous, aa if they glowed with
inward light. In tletolHjr a maplc-tria* hi'forc
your window lights up your room like a great lamp.
Even on cloutly days its prestiuce helps to di.sjK;l
the gloom. The elm, the oak, the Iwetrh, |>os.se.ss
in a much less degrt;© that quality of lumitJosity,
though certain species of oak at times are rich in
shad^ of red and bronze. The leaves of the trees
just named for the most part turn brown before
they fall. The great leaves of the sycamore assume
a rich tan-eolor like fine leather.

The spider weaves a not out of her own vitals
with whieh to capture her prey, but the net is not
a part of herself as tlie leaf is a part of the tree.
'I'he spitler repairs her damaged net, hut the tree
never »i pairs its leaves. It may put forth now
leaves, but it. never essays to pati'h up the old ones.
Every tree has sueh a supcrultuiulanee of leaves
that a few more or le.ss or a few torn and bruised
ones ill) nut seem to mutter. When the leaf
Hurruee is aeiiuusly eurtailed, as it often is by some
inseel jH-st, or sume form of leaf-blight, or by the
ravages of a hail slorm, the growth of the tree and
the maturing of its fruit is seriously checked. To

UNDER THE MAPLES

denude a tree of its foliage three years in succession
usually proves fatal. The vitality of the tree
declines year by year till death ensues.

To me nothing else about a tree is so remarkable
as the extreme delicacy of the mechanism by which
it grows and lives, the fine hairlike rootlets at the
bottom and the microscopical cells of the leaves at
the top. The rootlets absorb the water charged
with mineral salts from the soil, and the leaves
absorb the sunbeams from the air. So it looks as
if the tree were almost made of matter and spirit,
like man; the ether with its vibrations, on the one
hand, and the earth with its inorganic compounds,
on the other — earth salts and sunlight. The sturdy
oak, the gigantic sequoia, are each equally finely
organized in these parts that take hold upon nature.
We call certain plants gross feeders, and in a sense
they are; but all are delicate feeders in their
mechanism of absorption from the earth and air.

The tree touches the inorganic world at the two
finest points of its structure — the rootlets and
the leaves. These attack the great crude world
of inorganic matter with weapons so fine that only
the microscope can fully reveal them to us. The
animal world seizes its food in masses little and big,
and often gorges itself with it, but the vegetable,
through the agency of the solvent power of water,
absorbs its nourishment molecule by molecule.

A tree does not live by its big roots — these are

4

THE FALI.ING LEAVES

nininly for stronslli and to hold it to the ground.
How thi'y gri[> the rcHiks, fitting themselves to them,
ns Ixiwell says, like molten luetid! The tree’s life
is in the; fine luiirlike rootlets that spring from the
riHits. Dnrwin snys those rootlets behave as if
t hey had minute brains in their extremities. They
feel their wny into the noil; they know the elements
the plant wants; some sekict more lime, others
more potash, others more magnesia. The wheat
rootlets si^Uait more silica to make the stalk; the
I>ea rootlets select more lime: the pea does not
need the silica. The individuality of plants and
trees in Uiis resjKict is most remarkable. The
cells of each seem to know what particular elements
they want from the wiil, as of course they do.

The vital activity of tlie tree goes on at three
IKiints—in the leaves, in the rootlets, and in the
cambium layer. The activity of the leaf and root-
let funH,shes the starchy deposit which forms this
generative layer - the milky, inncilaginoua girdle
of matter In'twiaui the outer bark and the wood
through which the tree grows and increases in size.
(»<*iu*r<it.iou and regeneration take place through
this layer. I have culled it the girdle of perpetual
youth. It iu*vcr grows old. It is annually renewed,
'fhe heart of the old apiile-tree may decay and
ilisappear, indeiHl the Irw may he reduced to a
mere shell ami many of its hrauches may die and
fall, but tlie few apples which it still bears attest

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